In many arguments the most uncomfortable position is often somewhere in the middle, open as you are to being attacked by both sides of a conflict. Those occupying what they perceive to be the middle use the evidence of both attacks as justification that they must be on to something. We’re not making the mistakes or extremes of this side or that side and that’s why they’re attacking us. But the idea that we must be on to something because neither side like us, while understandable is also wrong-headed. It is akin to thinking of post-war Berlin and deciding the right position to be neither west nor east Berlin but the wall. Attacked by both sides, it ultimately had to be torn down.

It is possible that both sides are correct in thinking that this middle position cannot last.

Within debates about the Bible and contemporary ethics the middle place I’m thinking of is occupied by evangelical egalitarians. Attacked from one side by complementarian evangelicals for revising their position on the role of woman in the family and the church and so denying the authority of Scripture. To which they retort ‘not so, we uphold Scripture’. Attacked on the other side by liberal progressives for not revising their position enough and completing the shift by affirming same-sex marriage or transgender priests. ‘Not so’ comes the reply again, ‘it’s not the same thing’.

That both conservatives and progressives find common fault is interesting because from their polar opposite positions they reply to the egalitarians that actually it is indeed very much the same thing.

Back in November in the UK the Bishop of Oxford & supporting other Bishops (including the Bishop of Worcester) published a document arguing for full affirmation of same-sex marriages in the church and the priesthood. A proposal which evangelical and egalitarian scholar Ian Paul opposed. Then in a Twitter discussion with the Bishop of Worcester this uncomfortable middle position was poked at. The Bishop, quite reasonably asks, “And your approach to the ordination of women as priests and bishops would presumably be the same? We live with different approaches to that in our church, as we should with this. I do not think a western approach to the status of women is blinded but, rather, enlightened.”

To which Ian replies, “Mine certainly is. Women exercised authoritative ministry in the NT, in the early church, and all through history. I support the full ministry of women because Scripture supports it.”

The good Bishop retorts, “It is a convenient but completely false interpretation of the ministerial practice of the church catholic in every age until now and a selective approach to the scriptures. I seem to remember being accused of that myself!”

The point is clear – the liberal revisionist says, “Look you’ve revised your view and practice on the issue of women in ministry, despite the universal history & practice being different. So why won’t you do this on same-sex marriage?” The egalitarian is forced to try and argue that this revision is not like that revision.

Yet this connection comes up time and time again. Andrew Wilson spots it in Frederick Dale Bruner’s latest work on Romans when Bruner writes,

We now rightly dismiss the Paul-attributed texts against women teaching or preaching in the church (1 Tim 2:11 and 1 Cor 14:33b-36), not least because the risen Lord had women sent as his first resurrection messengers in all four Gospels. Should we also, perhaps, pass over Paul’s present condemnation of homosexual practice in the light of Jesus’ general silence on the subject? (The Letter to the Romans, 17)

The same argument was made by Steve Chalke, and by progressive churches the world West over. Now if I want to annoy an evangelical egalitarian then I’ll just go ahead and argue for a slippery slope which will be passionately rebutted but I don’t need to do that. Both the accusation & the rebuttal makes the point.

In the long game of history it will be interesting to see if the middle can hold. So while the church in the West might be shifting ground from one side to the other, in terms of Western culture, the middle is unlikely to hold.